


But Dreamers Never Die

by Crazythatcounts



Category: The Beatles
Genre: M/M, Timeskip, Trippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 10:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5244854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazythatcounts/pseuds/Crazythatcounts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You think… you think s’possible to wake up one moment ‘n forget years of your life?"</p><p> </p><p>Written in like 2009/2010?</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Dreamers Never Die

Paul blinked, and shook his head. He didn’t remember tuning out, but he most certainly just tuned back in. His mind whirred behind his eyes, trying to focus, and he frowned. He felt…old. Not like he was an old man old, but older, wiser. There were things in his brain, thoughts just behind his eyes, that he remembered experiencing yet remembered he hadn’t experienced yet. Fleeting glimpses of things he didn’t remember happening yet, but distinctly memories in his mind. A child – Julian? He didn’t know how he knew the name, he’d never heard it before – a rocket to fame, best sellers, band suits, Walruses, games and songs and videos and tours and years of his life that he knew happened yet didn’t feel like it at all.

 

“It’s been almost a decade since the band broke up.” John was sitting next to him in the car. He looked older. His face was drawn and he was skinny as a rail, his hair stringy yet his eyes, those mischievous eyes, still as spry and bright as ever. He wasn’t smiling, though, and that was certainly new, as well as the bit about the band breaking up. Paul was certain they just _formed_ the bloody band, yet he remembered the breakup like it was yesterday.

 

“Yeah.” Paul didn’t ask his mouth to speak, he just did. It was almost as though he were removed from himself, yet still very present. “I miss it, a little.”

 

“Yeah. Always gonna miss it, aren’t we, Macca?” John chuckled. “But we’re not gonna fix anything with missing it.” He lit up a cigarette in the back of the car Paul noticed they were in, suddenly, even though he didn’t remember getting in the car. Instead of mentioning it, however – or any of the other strange memories he had in his brain – he took the second cigarette John had offered and lit up himself.

 

“Ta.” He murmured, letting silence fall amid the smoke and warmth. He closed his eyes and let his mind open to him, thinking. The date – he knew he knew it – it was December 8th, 1980. 1980?! That couldn’t be. Last thing Paul remembered it was just bearing down on the 60s, not even that yet. How could twenty years have passed? How did he _miss_ this? He realized the memories were all those years, stored away. He gulped, feeling a tingle of fear running through him. What did he miss? What had he forgotten? What if he’d never get to live those twenty years and have to resort to memories that were foreign to him that he was in?

 

“Hey, John?” Paul’s voice came out funny, like he was really the fifteen year old he had been before he’d blinked. “You think… you think s’possible to wake up one moment ‘n forget years of your life?”

 

“S’amnesia, Paulie.” John chuckled. “Why? You forgot something?”

 

“No, s’different. I… have the memories, you know, I just… don’t feel like I’ve done ‘um. Feel like I was just a kid, then I blinked and now I’m here.” Paul laid the problem out there, feeling strangely vulnerable to a man who his memories and heart said was the most trusted person he’d ever come to know.

 

“Think that’s just old age, son.” John laughed. When he was greeted with a slightly terrified silence, his demeanor changed. “You really don’t remember?”

 

“I do, but it’s like I’m watching a film of me own life, with me in it.” Paul took a deep breath. Why did he suddenly feel so young trapped in an old man’s body? He had the distinct sensation that he wasn’t who his mind and body said he was, that he was different and scared and just a child trying to face this all down and it wasn’t working well. He’d get through it, he knew, but he didn’t know how. John, sensing the discomfort, reached over to brush a lock of hair from Paul’s face, and Paul flinched away.

 

“Bloody hell, mate, you really don’t remember.” John whispered, taking his hand back. There was a tense, terse silence as John’s face contorted inward a little with an idea. “Who am I to you, Paul? Tell me.”

 

“You’re…” Paul thought, and the memories were there – fighting with Yoko, missed phone calls, yelling, and then… then… “you’re my boyfriend…?” He took a moment to register the words that left his mouth. “John, you’re a poof?”

 

“Pot and the kettle, Paulie. You bloody jumped _me_.” John chuckled bitterly, before answering the question anyway. “Since we were kids, Macca. Late fiftes. We _talked_ about this.” He bit out the words, like admitting that he was in love with Paul, no matter how accepting Paul happened to be, was something he didn’t want to do twice. He’d done it once and that was hard enough, Paul remembered. There were insults flung and a chair was broken all because neither wanted to admit that they were what they’d mocked Brian for. Brian, their poofter. Paul didn’t even remember him that well.

 

“You know… just because I don’t remember doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.” Paul voiced, scooting closer on the seat. “I can’t connect with the memories, but I connect bloody well with my heart, and it remembers.”

 

“Poof.” John grinned, ribbing Paul a little, and Paul ribbed him back. It was like old times – times that Paul did remember, when they were kids, still so little. It was nice, to have something familiar in the strange world. Yes, John apparently was dating him and he was okay with that, and he realized that if John had said something when they were kids he would have probably been okay with it then, too. That Lennon was endearing in his own way, a cocky asshole and a genius all rolled into one talented, funny, snarky being.

 

The car rolled to a halt, and John opened the door, one hand in Paul’s, pulling him out of the vehicle behind. Paul didn’t have a chance to even get out.

 

“John Lennon?”

 

Seven gunshots split the air, and a scream. The world around Paul swam as he struggled to get out of the car and to the sidewalk. There was blood. Pools of dark red rivers flowing towards him, staining his shoes and his pants with a vibrant stain. He couldn’t focus on anything but John, the rest of the world swirling color and shape, blurred and buzzing and unfocused.

 

“John!” Paul lifted John into his lap, cradling him, ignoring the blood that looked so black, like night, pouring out of John’s body. John was staring up at Paul, blood at the corners of his lips, one hand clutching his chest to dam the rivers and the other reaching up, up, just brushing Paul’s face. “John, oh bloody _hell_ John.”

 

“Strange way to end the night.” John chuckled, lips staining red with his blood, the rivers spasming against his chest, turning into an ocean around Paul’s knees.

 

“No, no, night’s not over yet. You’re gonna be okay ‘n we’re gonna go home after all this and laugh, yeah?” Paul wasn’t sure if he was begging for the truth, or hiding behind a desperate lie.

 

“No m’not, Macca.” John grinned, teeth red and mouth black and so strange. His glasses were broken, and Paul removed them from John’s face. “I’m dying.”

 

“Don’t say that.” Paul pulled John a little closer as the dying man coughed.

 

“No use lying, son.” John rested his head against Paul’s chest. He glanced up at Paul, those spry and sparkling eyes growing dimmer. “Can’t help it.”

 

“John…” Paul brushed a strand of bloody hair from John’s face. He noticed, suddenly, a strange thing was happening. John was changing. Paul didn’t remember the faces John was changing through, yet he recognized them distinctly in his brain. The short hair and beard from a few years ago. The longer hair when Sean was born. The stringy hair from the Let it Be cover. The straggly, Amish like days. Paul was watching John grow younger and younger, backwards, in his arms. The short, soft cut and sideburns. The mustache. The bowl cut, getting shorter and shorter and shorter until John was the teenager Paul had met years and years ago, lying in his arms, bullets still bleeding rivers from his chest. Paul clutched the young John close, the memories that he remembered flooding his mind.

 

He leaned down and, on a whim, kissed John once, lightly.

 

“Ta.” John said, and he breathed his last, dying in Paul’s arms as the man flashed through the life he missed until the flickers of times gone by faded and he was just a kid, the tiny McCartney cradling his best friend in his lap.

 

“ _John!_ ” Paul buried his head in the nape of John’s neck and just screamed. Screamed and screamed and screamed into the skin that was still so warm and wet and slick with blood and tears. He screamed, even as the rivers still pouring out of John grew so deep that he was sitting in a foot of it. He screamed until he felt the river pulling him, taking him with it and he went under, gasping for air he couldn’t have, screaming against the blood. He gasped once more, and his eyes closed.

 

Seconds later, he sat up in bed, panting. He was in his room, in his house, where he belonged. He looked at his hands – his own hands. He wasn’t dead, it was a dream. Just a strange, strange dream. He didn’t have any strange memories he didn’t remember, or thoughts or feelings he couldn’t place. Except one. That lingering feeling for John from before, right in his heart.

 

He looked over, and smiled. John was asleep beside Paul, sharing a bed, like always. “Mmm, Macca?” John grumbled something and forced his head up from the pillow, eyes squinting without glasses and eyebrows furrowed with concern. He didn’t need to say anything.

 

“Nothing, John. Just a dream.” Paul smiled, snuggling back down in bed next to his friend. “Just a strange, strange dream.”


End file.
